Austrian Cuirassiers regiment no 4 Kronprinz Ferdinand Napoleonic 70

 These are Perry plastic Austrian Cuirassiers regiment no 4 Kronprinz Ferdinand lovely figures, the Perry plastic horses have so much more animation than their warlord counterparts , there's so much more variety, the musculature is  much more defined, they're just better sculptures, the figures are as good as always, in this set you get torso's for cuirassiers and dragoon/ chevaulegers and a variety of helmets and sword arms, so the left overs, so to speak, have been combined with hussar overall legs and spare Perry  British light dragoon horses to give me some Austrian dragoon regiments, I really like all the spare parts you get with the plastic sets, especially the Perry ones , as I enjoy trying to find other uses or fill gaps in ranges with them!

 Originally I  bought two Perry plastic British light dragoon sets so that I could add spare French carabiner helmets to the later tunic wearing bodies with overalls to give me two units of dragoons and convert the earlier uniform into hussars, which added to two units of Foundry chevaulegers and one of Foundry cuirassier would give me a neat little Austrian cavalry force, along the lines of Norms pocket armies and sufficient to give a game if not able to cover battles with the right proportion of units. Once I'd procured these figures Perry released their plastic Austrian cavalry and my British light dragoons in their borrowed helmets began to look shabby and , let's face it , somewhat obsolete? Plus I'd planned to carve off their Bardin style tunic,quite a lot of work. Suffice to say after a certain amount of procrastinating I bought three sets of the Austrian cavalry which with an additional command sprue gives me four units of Austrian cuirassiers plus the makings of four Austrian dragoons and I had to get a box of the Austrian hussars, I'm going to end up with five units of cuirassiers, two chevaulegers, three dragoons, four units of hussars and two units of uhlans made out of the redundant British light dragoons. Of course the French have increased in proportion and so has the infantry! In spite of sticking a spanner in the works I don't mind as I am happy painting and they're really lovely sculpts! This unit is the fourth unit of plastic cuirassiers and as such it shares with my earlier French dragoons painted in Jamaica in  that it's been put together with left overs, although not to the extent the dragoons were, you have two spare horses and troopers ( as you get fourteen figures in a box and my units are twelve strong) combined with a command sprue which gave me an officer and trumpeter gets me eight, plus two spare horses from my Austrian hussars box and the spare troopers horse from the Austrian hussars command sprue I got takes us up to eleven, I think there's a British light dragoon horse in one of the other units as there's twelve kosher Austrian cavalry horses in this unit! The other troopers are made up of hussar overall legs with the spare cuirassier wearing torsos you end up with if you use the flag bearer as he is mounted on a troopers legs. Didn't quite have enough heads so one of the troopers is wearing the earlier helmet ( sans que) and two of them are wearing British household cavalry helmets from a pair of figures I got free with Wargames Illustrated! Three of them are missing cartridge cases and I've just done a bit of tromp loi, I just painted a black rectangle where the case is meant to be and that works surprisingly well! Last unit painted in Jamaica,I think I'll do a Jamaican parade next!

All the best 

Iain